This focus on ‘I AM’ by Nisargadatta as per the injunction of his guru is not a version of the Cartesian critique. It is not a reflection on fundamental data out of which we proceed to construct a world, in Descartes’ case by the grace of God who is not a deceiver. It is primarily a practice and not an epistemological or ontological position. Yet it can appear to be so and Maharaj (Nisargadatta) often in his elucidations veers close to a subjective position. My view is that this interpretation is due to the action of the very potent mind virus that is Subjective Idealism. Realism seems too naive; a mind independent world falls before the fact of illusion, the state of our brain is the state of the world and so forth. All this purports to be the thinking man’s position.
Q:When I wake up in the morning, the world is already there, waiting for me. Surely the world comes into being first. | do, but much later, at the earliest at my birth. The body mediates between me and the world. Without the body there would be neither me nor the world.
M:The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness; you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way. Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it. Have a good look at yourself and all these misapprehensions and misconceptions will dissolve. Just as all the little watery lives are in water and cannot be without water, so all the universe Is in you and cannot be without you. (Chapter 44 I AM THAT)
Nisargadatta recognises the realism position of the Questioner in this chapter and by challenging it with a seemingly subjective idealist position attempts to prod him towards a deeper analysis. It proceeds by the usual adhiropa/apavada dialectical method which is the primary procedure of Advaita. Each understanding is sublated by a subsequent one. You have to dwell where you are and only move via insight. You can’t just intellectually claim a new understanding, you must feel the force of it.
In this case the authority of the guru challenges the standard realist position, a naive common sense one, infra philosophical as Etienne Gilson puts it. Is there a way that both can be simultaneously true, this world as mind dependent and a real mind independent world? Nisargadatta asserts:
In other words, the absolutely material and the absolutely spiritual, the totally objective and the totally subjective are identical, both in substance and essence.
How this ‘identity’ is to be understood is explicated in the ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’ of Adhvarindra. cf topic
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